Author Events in November

â€¢ Thursday, Nov. 3, 7:30 p.m. — Twin Cities Live Book Club to discuss Room, by Emma Donoghue — The Twin Cities Live Book Club wraps up its discussion of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room at 6 p.m. and goes until 8 p.m. Enjoy free refreshments from Lucia’s To Go. Win prizes and discuss the book with Elizabeth Ries. No RSVPs are necessary for this event.

Room by Emma Donoghue is a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances. To 5-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough… not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

â€¢ Monday, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m. — Adam Fell and Karolyn Redoute read from their poetry — Adam Fell is the author of I Am Not A Pioneer. He was born and raised in Burlington, WI, and holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Madison, where he teaches at Edgewood College.

Karolyn Redoute received an MFA from Indiana University. She enjoys the blue waters in Michigan, her home state, and in Minnesota, her adopted state, but loves the ocean best.

â€¢ Tuesday, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m. — Chuck Klosterman visits Minneapolis to read from his second novel, The Visible Man. The Current’s Steve Seel will lead the discussion following the reading. — Austin (TX) therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable. As he slowly reveals himself, Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions: Y__, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible. He says he uses this ability to observe random individuals within their daily lives, usually when they are alone and vulnerable. Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient and the disclosure of his increasingly bizarre and disturbing tales. Over time, it threatens her career, her marriage, and her own identity.

Interspersed with notes, correspondence, and transcriptions that catalog a relationship based on curiosity and fear, The Visible Man touches on all of Chuck Klosterman’s favorite themes: the consequence of culture, the influence of media, the complexity of voyeurism, and the existential contradiction of normalcy. Is this comedy, criticism, or horror? Not even Y__ seems to know for sure.

Chuck Klosterman is the New York Times bestselling author of Eating the Dinosaur, Downtown Owl, Chuck Klosterman IV, Killing Yourself to Live, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, and Fargo Rock City, winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He has written for GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, A.V. Club, and ESPN. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Steve Seel will lead the post-reading discussion. Steve Seel co-hosts weekday mornings on The Current (89.3FM) with Jill Riley from 6-10 a.m. A longtime a DJ and producer, he has a wide knowledge of music from classical to rock, experimental and jazz, and is an accomplished musician himself.

â€¢ Thursday, Nov. 10, 7:30 p.m. — Kathie Bergquist discusses Windy City Queer: LGBTQ Dispatches from the Third Coast. Several contributors will also appear — The Midwest’s queer history comes alive when editor Kathie Bergquist and several contributors discuss the new anthology of writing about Chicago, Windy City Queer. The contributions of the Midwest and, specifically, Chicago to LGBTQ literature have been invaluable, yet largely uncelebrated over the last century. This anthology charts a map of queer Chicago and showcases its thriving urban arts community, which boasts a unique history, legacy, and sensibility deeply rooted in the urban Midwest.

Here is a first-rate collection of queer voices from Chicago’s literary landscape. Celebrated writers Edmund White, Achy Obejas, Sharon Bridgforth, Brian Bouldrey, E. Patrick Johnson, Carol Anshaw, David Trinidad and Mark Zubro are joined by emerging voices from the queer literary scene. The pieces span all literary genres, from fiction and poetry to memoir and essays, and portray a full gamut of gay Chicago lives from the everyday to the quirky, from public spectacles to quiet intimacies, from family life to nightlife, from dating to marriage, from loving to mourning.

Kathie Bergquist teaches writing at Columbia College Chicago. She is co-author of A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago, and her writing has appeared in such publications as Advocate, OUT, Girlfriends, and Diva as well as in several collections, including Best Lesbian Romance 2009 and Out in All Directions. She is a former editor of the Windy City Times Pride Literary Supplement and a former fellow at the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers Retreat.

This event is co-sponsored by Quatrefoil Library. Quatrefoil Library is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2011. The volunteer-run, non-profit library collects, maintains, documents, and circulates gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer materials and information in a safe and accessible space. Quatrefoil’s collection includes books, videos, DVDs, and sound recordings, which members may check out, as well as a large collection of non-circulating periodicals. Learn more at www.qlibrary.org.

â€¢ Sunday, Nov. 13, 4 p.m. — Tom Montgomery Fate reads from Cabin Fever: A Suburban Father’s Search for the Wild — Try to imagine Thoreau married, with a job, three kids, and a minivan. This is the serious yet irreverent sensibility that suffuses Cabin Fever: A Suburban Father’s Search for the Wild, as the author seeks to apply the hermit-philosopher’s insights to a busy modern life.

Tom Montgomery Fate lives in a Chicago suburb, where he is a husband, father, professor, and active member of his community. He also lives in a cabin built with the help of friends in the Michigan woods, where he walks by the river, chops wood, and reads Thoreau by candle light. While he divides his time between suburbia and the cabin, Fate’s point is not to draw a line between the two but to ask what each has to say about the other. How do we balance nature (picking blackberries) with technology (tapping BlackBerrys)? What is revealed about human boundaries when a coyote wanders into a Quiznos? Can a cardinal protecting chicks from a hungry cat teach us anything about instincts and parenting? Fate seeks a more attentive, deliberate way of seeing the world and our place in it, not only among the trees and birds but also in the context of our relationships and society.

A seasonal nature memoir, Cabin Fever takes readers on a search for the wild both in the woods and within ourselves. Although we are often estranged from nature in our daily lives, Fate shows that we can recover our kinship with the earth and its other inhabitants if we are willing to pay attention.

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